Blindfold Chess Podcast

The Iron Tigran was Tigran Petrosian’s nickname for his solid defensive style. Born in 1929, he started learning chess when he was 8. During WWII - Petrosian was orphaned and needed to sweep streets to earn a living. During this time, he got sick and developed a hearing problem that would affect him for the remainder of his life.    Using his ration money, Petrosian bought Chess Praxis by Nimzowit...

I have been a fan of Sam Shankland for several years. I love that he plays the Caro Kann, his books are good, but mostly - I appreciate his blunt and brutal honesty when talking to people.  Born in 1991, Sam started playing chess at 6, but only really started playing in tournaments at the age of 11. When he was 17, he started making a splash nationally and internationally by winning the Pacific Co...

 Born in 1941, Nona Gaprindashvili was the youngest of 6 kids and the only girl. She began playing chess at 5 from watching her brother play. Her first major break came when her brother had to back out of a local Team Championship. Nona stepped in to fill his place and performed very well scoring 5th overall.  There is a really nice interview she gave to Chessbase in 2018 walking through her chess...

This episode was a struggle to cram all of Viswanathan Anand’s accomplishments into a highlight script! The Indian Grandmaster has been one of the most dominant and successful players in the game for over almost 4 decades. He was born on December 11, 1969, and moved to Chennai, India, and began playing chess at the age of six from his mother who was a chess aficionado. Anand’s rise in the chess wo...

This week, we are looking at the Hungarian chess player, commentator, and streamer - Anna Rudolf.  She began playing chess at the age of 4 with her sister, Kata. The two of them had Laszlo Rudolf as a father who played competitive chess as well, reaching a peak rating of 2185 FIDE. Laszlo was also a world champion of Hexagonal Chess. At the age of 9, Anna drew media attention by beating Grandmaste...

This week we are looking at the young and rising Russian star - Andrey Esipenko. Born on March 22, 2002, Esipenko started playing chess at the age of five, and he quickly showed great promise. Esipenko's early chess accomplishments include winning the European U10 Championship in 2012 the next year, he earned his FIDE title.  2017 was a busy year for the 15 year old star. He won both the Euro...

Miguel Najdorf was a Polish-Argentine chess grandmaster who was one of the strongest players who never won a world championship. He was born on April 15, 1910, in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Poland. He was introduced to chess by a friend  at the age of 14.  His chess career began to take off around 1929 when he was almost 20 with the game now called ‘The Polish Immortal’ where he sacrificed 5 pieces in a...

Chess has historically been commented on as black and white, that extends beyond the board too. There are female and ‘open’ tournaments (which are traditionally male), ‘open’ and female titles, and if they are integrated in the same tournament, there are sometimes ‘open’ and female prizes.  This freedom of expression has been challenged by FIDE in August 2023. FIDE announced a policy that is… diff...

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, sometimes nicknamed as Pragg, is a young Indian chess player who has made waves in the international chess scene with his impressive performances. Born on August 10, 2005, in Chennai (Chin-eye), India, he began playing chess at the age of three.  Praggnanandhaa's talent was immediately apparent, and he quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the top chess pl...

Hello and welcome back for another episode! This month, we will be looking at King and Pawn puzzles!  In today’s episode,  I will be providing you with the locations of the different pieces on the board. It is your job to figure out the solution by pausing the podcast before moving on. Today, we will be looking at 3 puzzles each around a different endgame theme starting from Easy and working our w...

Robert James Fischer, also known as Bobby Fischer, was an American chess player who is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Born in Chicago on March 9, 1943, he learned how to play chess at the age of six, and quickly demonstrated exceptional talent for the game.  Fischer began playing in competitive chess tournaments at the age of eight, and by the age of 13, he had be...

During the 2020 Pandemic, chess caught fire due to the access of streaming and the Netflix show - Queen’s Gambit. In the show, we saw the main character, Beth Harmon, go from discovering the game to taking down the World Champion in one game.  While the show takes a couple liberties to dramatize the chess scene - it is still one of the best chess pieces of media that are out there… and there are s...

With a birthday tomorrow, this week we will be focusing on Alexandra Botez, the Canadian- American chess player and content creator who has made a significant impact on the online chess community. She was born on September 24, 1995, in Dallas, Texas to Romanian immigrant parents, then grew up in Vancouver, Canada. Botez started playing chess at the age of six and quickly became one of Canada'...

Born to a family of economists in 1996, Hungarian native Richard Rapport got into chess when his father was concerned about his lack of concentration in primary school. Shortly after an introduction to the game, Richard was hooked so much that his father became concerned that he was concentrating too much on chess. Rather than pulling him away, his parents embraced the enthusiasm by coordinating e...

José Raúl Capablanca was a Cuban chess player widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. Capablanca is best known for his exceptional endgame skills and his ability to simplify complex positions into winning endgames.  Capablanca’s chess career began at a young age. He learned to play chess at the age of four by watching his father. The story goes that Jose pointed out an illegal...

Simon Kim Williams, also known as GingerGM, is a British Grandmaster who has made significant contributions to the chess world as a player, commentator, and author. He is known for his innovative and aggressive playing style, and his books and videos often focus on unorthodox opening ideas and attacking strategies.  Born in 1979, Williams started playing chess around the age of 6, his father, a st...

Nazi Paikidze  is a Georgian-American chess player who was born on January 27, 1994, in Tbilisi, Georgia.  Paikidze's career as a chess player began at 4 and started working with her first coach at 6, quickly establishing herself as one of the most promising young players in Georgia. Chess was a part of the curriculum and she has said it was her favorite class.  At the age of 9 she won her fi...

Anatoly Karpov is a Russian grandmaster and former world champion who dominated the game in the 1970s and 1980s. He was born on May 23, 1951, in Zlatoust, Russia, and began playing chess at 4, earning his Candidate Master title at 11. At 12, he was admitted into Mikhail Botvinnik’s chess school. Botvinnik remarked - “The boy does not have a clue about chess, and there’s no future at all for him in...

Garry Kasparov is widely regarded as one of the greatest chess players of all time. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1963, Kasparov began playing chess at a young age and quickly rose as a prodigy.  In 1978, he participated in the Sokolsky Memorial and took home first place to become a master (at the age of 16). Later that year, he qualified for and won the 64 person Swiss system USSR Chess Championsh...

The Blindfold King, Grandmaster Timur Gareyev is the current Guiness World Record holder for the most simultaneous blindfolded chess games played at the same time. Originally from Uzbekistan, he won the U14 Asian Championship at the age of 12.  He became a Grandmaster at the age of 15.  His major claim to fame is becoming the Blindfold King.  In December of 2016 in Las Vegas, Timur played 48 games...

Recognized as the first official World Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, owned the title from 1886-1894.  Born in 1836 as the last of 13 sons, he began playing chess at 12 and started studying it in his 20's At the end of the 1850's he became very dominant being nicknamed 'The Austrian Morphy' (after the American, Paul Morphy). After a successful match against Italian Master Serafino...

A pioneer in Computer Chess and Chess Coach, Mikhail Botvinnik had an incredibly strong impact on Russian and global chess.  He was the first world class player to develop in the USSR and he was the driving organizational force for chess after WWII  creating the 'Russian School of Chess' teaching students like Karpov, Kasparov, and Kramnik. Not only was he a great coach, but an unbelieva...

It is my birthday today! As a present to myself I wanted to look at my favorite chess player - Mikhail Tal.  Known for his creativity and attacking play - The Magician of Riga was the 8th World Champion from 1960-1961. He is also known for his improvisation and unpredictability, sometimes that would backfire, but other times it led to brilliancies still talked about today. He grew up in Soviet-Lat...

The Mozart of Chess, the highest rated human player in history (2882), the 5-time World Champion, and the second longest reign of holding the FIDE number 1 title which has been uninterupted since July 2011. Magnus Carlsen is in a league of his own in the chess world.  At the time of recording this, he is currently 50 rating points ahead of World Number 2. To put that into comparison, there is a 50...

With the World Chess Championship currently underway, today we are looking at the second Challenger - Ding Liren. The highest rated Chinese player in history, the #2 player in the world for over a year and having the longest  undefeated streak in top-level classical chess history from August 2017-November 2018, ... until Magnus beat that streak in 2019,   Ding Liren's chess career is just as...